Feline

Published in BIGnews Magazine, 2002

"As many feline owners know, it often feels as if it is the feline that owns you. Felines are quite dramatic in all they do, including eccentric and unusual behaviors that seem to defy logic and mystify humans. Unlike you, your feline probably has a reason for everything it does.  Although, some behaviors will likely mesmerize you, either from the sheer cuteness of it or the absurdity of it, pay careful heed to what these behaviors say about your feline, and about you." - Feline Behavior

Part One

Before I knew what was happening — before I knew what she was — I knew that I was dying.

"Silly boy," she said. 

I saw her words and heard them too. They dripped from her lips the color blue.

Before I could leave, she had me on the floor, wrapped in her long black hair. Her breath was hot. Her mouth so close, it thinned the air between us.  

And … she smelled of the summers I spent as a child in the Catskill Mountains. How could she smell like a memory?

We were nose to nose. Her legs locked around my waist.

“This is all wrong, I should leave,” I said, but she stretched her back and pressed her soft center into my hard lap.

She lifted her arms so I could pull her dress away.

I recalled a warning … somewhere. Had it been sewn into the neckline of her dress?

Warning: Your feline may see itself as flawless, however there are occasions when its behavior becomes inappropriate and troublesome. Before reacting with disciplinary measures, understand why your feline may be acting out. To us, a feline's actions may seem irrational, yet, to the feline mind, they may be a justifiable necessity.

She reached into my pocket. Her fingers thrilled me into a rocking motion. I tried to touch her, but she threw my hands away and from my pocket she retrieve a small knife I used to open bottles.

"Silly boy, why do you have such a silly thing?” she hissed. 

I tried to explain, but her tongue came into my mouth and the blade against my ribs. I shoved her, scaring her into a rushed slap. 

My face burned. I was bleeding. Her nails were too long.

"Silly!" she cried. 

She took herself away from me. First her right leg, then the left, and then she lifted off my lap, less like a cat and more like a spider. 

She scurried backward across the floor colliding with my reading chair. She was an insidious thing.

Her eyes watched me closely. 

She was unsure. She did not trust me. 

Had I hurt her before?

Part Two

I came home to find her silently sitting on the kitchen table. She was in heat. I smelled it from the driveway. I thought I should greet her, but her name was lost long ago.

We had violent sex on the kitchen table. 

This is how it went:

I dropped my briefcase. I walked over to her. I spread her legs and burrowed into her. She shrieked and hiss and scratched my face. I went in hard, splitting the table, while a man on the radio talked:

"Your feline uses body language almost exclusively to communicate. Watching how your feline carries itself will help you to understand how it's feeling.  As you learn, you'll be able to predict its behavior as well.”

After we were done, with the taste of her still wet in my mouth, after just feeling her seconds ago — she was gone. I thought if I picked up my briefcase and retraced my steps, maybe I'd find her on the kitchen table again. 

She was gone for days.  

She returned just when I was thinking that I should be gone too. I was laying in bed staring at my voiceless phone when her warm hand came around my waist.

Her body grew out of the mattress, like liquid solidifying.

She jumped on top of me.

I was hard and inside her.

Her wide, fleshy grin seemed to stretch further with each thrust of her hips. 

It felt wrong. It was all wrong. I was panting. I was struggling to breathe.

Was she trying to take the breath right from my lungs? 

“You’re doing it wrong,” I managed to say.

Her grin stretched out over the room.

I tried to restart it. I tried to get her off me, but she screamed and screamed and then her screams turned into alarms going off in my head.

When it was over, I lay wasted, bile rising in my throat. She giggled and repeated herself until I thought I'd strangle her for being so empty. 

I'd kill her — murder her — for being nothing at all.

"Silly boy, silly boy," she sang.

"Stop!" I shouted.

Her head went back over the pillows and her neck bent in a way that finally brought the warm bile over my lips and down my chin. 

What desperate wish for love had I made?

Part Three

She was missing for three days.

There was a message on my answering machine from a woman who thought she had called her husband. Her cheerful voice said that she would pick up the wine for dinner on her way home. After I saved the message, I made a plan to hang myself from a beam in my closet, but as I tied the extension cord around my neck, I heard laughter coming from the bathroom. I tried to ignore it. God and Satan both know I tried.

"Silly boy, where are you?" she called.

Her voice had the pitch of a child. I was revolted by how fast the blood rushed to my groin. I released the extension cord and went to find her. 

She was in the corner of the shower stall. Her black mane too long, flowing down her back passed her ankles, and caught beneath her feet. Her eyes were not the right blue either and they were too big and too far from the bridge of her nose. 

“Your hair is wrong,” I said. “Your fucking eyes are wrong too,” I added. 

In response, she flashed a grin of tiny sharp teeth. 

The errors were overwhelming, but still I went into the shower with her. I hoped the cold water would shock me awake. Maybe if I could wake up long enough to climb out of my head, I could send her away for good. But she slashed at me, using her sharp nails to cut my wrist, and then she danced around, making footprints of my blood.

“Who are you?” I asked. “What are you?”

I wanted her to say something meaningful. I was tired of hearing how silly I was. Why couldn't I make her as perfect as the woman on my answering machine?  

Even my own madness was not my own.

I took her by the throat and folded her into a pile of the wrong colored flesh — the wrong hair — the wrong eyes — and forced her down the drain, using my foot to stomp her all the way through. 

I thought it was over, but then I heard her small and sweet voice calling me from the bedroom as the man on the radio went on talking.

“A person may develop a strange obsession with his or her pet; more often than not they believe their pets to be human, a family member, a friend, a lover. This obsession is an illness caused by severe depression and or loneliness; feelings of dread and abandonment may lead to the belief that your pet's purpose is something far more superior to what it really is.”